skonen_blades

I got the news the other day about Black Dog video on Commercial Drive shutting down.
I've been renting there weekly for years.

An elegy is a poem that reflects upon a subject with sorrow or melancholy.
Whereas a eulogy is meant to offer praise.

Well, I come to praise the video store, not to bury it.

This one’s for the DVD
The commentaries from the cast, director, and crew
Giving insight into so many levels of the film
That obscure niche-horror B-movie
That noir foreign film one-shot from that writer-director’s short ‘magical realism’ phase
That divine experimental five-country co-production that’s no longer in print
That hard-to-find music documentary

The transition from Film to Beta to VHS to DVD to Blu Ray to digital
Already filtering out too many movies forever
But video stores were where so many of them could be captured
Collated and hoarded
Caught and preserved
Held in amber
An entire library of culture
A snapshot of the medium itself
A specialty shop of our collective dreams
And voices from the entire planet

Not these weak offerings that have the gall to call themselves services
Offering only the last decade
of only the greatest hits
While furiously churning out their own productions
And ignoring history
Split between a dozen companies that cost fifteen dollars a month
The math is clear
It’s the return of cable
They’re busy recreating the reasons we went to the video store in the first place

I feel like a history professor watching a library burn
While the people in the crowd around me talk about how
the property would make a very valuable something else
Once the lot is cleaned up

Streams are shallow and they have a current
Rapids pulling things by swiftly and then they’re gone
They’re supposed to lead to large bodies of water
Stable, deep repositories that in turn inspire the clouds to rain more ideas
Instead of just endlessly refreshing with the latest offerings
And there’s so much disposable pollution floating past

I’d have less of a problem
If they crossed the streams
And it led to a torrent
Which in turn led to a bay
That wasn’t run by pirates
Streams offers sips to a traveler
But you can live on an ocean
And you can dive so deep

The video store clerk is that elusive sibling
To the comic book store cashier
The record shop worker
The bookstore owner
All arbiters of culture
The person who you go to for a good recommendation
With an entire cathedral of material on hand to offer

I’m worried at what’s to be lost with the transition
As these businesses starve to death in the streets
The libraries do what they can
And I’m grateful they exist
But I worry it’s a band aid on a cut throat

The video store was an entrance to another dimension
Where couples went to pick out films
As a litmus test of compatibility
Where your mind emptied at the door as it faced countless options
Where the counterperson’s encyclopedic knowledge
Could steer you in the right direction
To walk through the shelves and see
The end products of unfathomable hard work
Where the lurid covers vied for your attention

The video store was where the question
“Is this any good?”
Could be answered with honesty
And would lead to a tour of other delights

To conjugate
Like the old man I am
I will miss the video store
I am missing the video store
I miss the video store

And I have so much love for them

So pour one out for all the independent purveyors of fading mediums
And if you happen to see a film buff crying silently in the bar
Consoled by someone with a crate of vinyl
And a person with a bag of zines and comics and old books
Hide your ereader and your iphone
And ask these ghosts of the echoes of the memories of gods
What their favorite anything is
And luxuriate in the ten-day answers

Here’s to Black Dog.
The latest domino on the Drive



tags

Today as I was walking down Commercial Drive
I walked past a thin, older, confident man wearing what looked like:

a leopard-print onesie
a faux-fur, tiger-striped vest
a shiny pair of short shorts
six dark, thick, prominent, tentacle-shaped face tattoos
so many rings, necklaces, and bracelets
and a zebra-striped fedora

He said to his friend sitting beside him
“Back in the forties, everyone used to wear hats. Like this.”
He pointed to his own hat as an example, and finished,
“Nowadays, nobody wears hats.”
with an air of regret
slightly smug
like he was keeping a tradition alive

And I thought it was the best metaphor
for how nostalgia is a liar

If that man could time-travel back to the forties dressed like that
No one would say “Hey, nice hat”
He’d be killed

The good old days are not what people thought they were
It just feels that way

The basis of so much political propaganda is getting back to the ‘good old days’ when men were men and women were women and the economy was good and kids were safe to walk the streets, etc, etc.

And it’s a lie

Times were only simpler because you were simpler.
Life gets harder and faster until you die
The complexities of human relationships, economics, and politics
from personal to national
are revealed to be so much more byzantine, deep, nuanced, and detailed than you could possibly imagine.
So who can help but be nostalgic?

People who say they’d do better in medieval times
or on a starship in the future
When in this reality
they’re a menial wage drone
an assistant manager at a tiny Wal Mart

The knights would chew them up
And so would starfleet

But I thought the dude looked great
Flying his flag on the drive
And hey

Nice hat



tags

I will trade you hours of my life in eight hour chunks for money that I can use for goods and services.
I will trade you this afternoon looking into your eyes for a sailboat.
I will trade this bag of emeralds for another week of feeling exactly like this.
I don't mind the music of today because I know that in about fifteen years, people who are 34 will listen to these songs and it will remind them of their adolescence and the emotional connection it will bring to them will be intense.
You were the prettiest girl in school. I called you on your sixteeth birthday, two months after my own. No one had remembered it was your birthday, including your parents. I had taken a deep breath and jumped off the cliff and dialed your number to ask you out. I didn't know it was your birthday either but I pretended that was the reason I had called. You were ecstatic and touched that someone had remembered. I asked if you wanted to go to a concert that very night. You said yes.
Your parents drove us up to the concert. We didn't have driver's licenses. It was at the Ridge Movie Theater. They had removed the movie screen and filled the stage with candles. It was the Cowboy Junkies just as they were getting big with their album The Trinity Sessions and Margot Timmins' voice rose and fell smoothly and caressing.
We went for a cigarette at intermission. Remember smoking as a teenager? Being so cool.
We caught the bus back. You were a little silly and giggly. I dropped you off at your doorstep. We didn't kiss but you smiled like I had never seen you smile in school. Joyous.
We've bumped into each other over the years now and again, separate circles of other people's lovers and acquaintances stringing us into meeting.
In fact, we just had brunch today and it was great. Almost twenty years later. Not really even catching up on the six years it's been since we saw each other last. Just hanging out and wandering with our feet as aimlessly as our conversation. No impatience. Just drinking in each other's sweet, sweet, subtext and power.
You're still the prettiest girl in school. I will always be taking you to that concert.
I will always be taking you to that concert.
I look forward to moving at the end of the month. I will have a new view and a place that feels like *my* apartment. Not some bullshit default high ceilinged transient impersonal yaletown loft where hookers and dealers haunt the entrance. The new place will be a place to come home to, not just a place to sleep between shifts. And even though it's three times the size, it's a hundred dollars cheaper.

You're all loved. You have to believe that.